LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Talk About Reality

Having recently read Hal Crowther's piece, "In the Realms of the
Unreal" [9/1/04 TPP], I was moved to recognize it as the most
rational and astute appraisal of our national conscience (or lack
thereof) I have ever come across in print. As a retiree who was never
in the employ of the corporate world, I found Crowther's ideas
striking harmonious chords with my life-long dismay over the American
collective psyche. Further, as a "liberal" Democrat and a devout
atheist, I have, for years, been puzzled how anyone in a democracy
could claim to be a Republican and/or believe in an afterlife. I've
recently decided that both conundrums could be explained by assuming
that these folks have accepted free-trade capitalism as a religion!
One wonders if Marx intended capitalism to be coupled with religion
as, "the opium of the people?" This bent would confirm my suspicion
that those who vote Republican are likely high on something other
than their own wealth. And it might also explain why the Democratic
National Committee has, over the last couple of decades, cultivated a
cozy corporate relationship instigated by a faulty pragmatic theory
that money equates to electoral votes -- while ignoring that money
actually equates to legislative votes. And this only proves that our
political community is as far from reality as is the general
populace.

I must apologize for expounding thoughts that likely echo
Crowther's own, but I thought he might like to know that there are
kindred spirits at large in our society. I'm also prompted to confess
that I feel I belong to the democratic wing of the Democratic Party
and, as such, I embraced Paul Wellstone and Dennis Kucinich as my
political bellwethers. Fate has stilled Sen. Wellstone's voice and a
combination of the DNC, the Democratic Leadership Council and a
disinclined media has effectively muffled Rep. Kucinich's views. As a
result, I'm being asked to vote for a man whose name I have
difficulty recalling (it's something like Kennedy? Or Clinton?). Talk
about reality! And lets hope Mr Crowther continues to talk about
it.

Bruce J. Kullen
Lisle, Ill.

Dash Denial

Crowther-basher L. Lieberman, of Columbus, Ga. ["Crowther Over
the Top," Letters, 10/01/04 TPP] is the one "over the top" (or is
it under the bottom?). I found Crowther's piece ["In the Realms
of the Unreal," 9/1/04 TPP] to be the best I've read yet in your
pages. He has deftly nailed our key national illness: denial. He has,
in fact, convinced me to revise my own post-election writing plans to
concentrate on that denial and the cultural war context. I now
believe that if we do not take this on, full in the face, we will all
be sputtering off while watching an easy Cheney-Bush (Jeb) victory in
2008.

Barry G. Parsons
Madison, Fla.

Fascists are Here

I have read and re-read Thom Hartmann"s excellent article of
9/15/04 TPP, "Veep's Ghost Warns: It Can Happen Here." I'm currently
excerpting it for notes to present to my mass media classes at Santa
Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa, Calif. As someone who is deeply
involved in media, a subscriber to journals from The Progressive and
The Progressive Populist to The American Conservative and the
Economist, my thought is that it's not a case of "It Can Happen
Here;" it already has. If we accept Hartmann's, Wallace's, and the
American Heritage Dictionary's definition of Fascism, and I do, we
are currently living under an American Fascist regime. This is a
troublesome assertion on my part. President George Bush is a Fascist,
and the Fascist wing of the Republican Party is now, and will
probably be for the next four years at least, in power. Orthodoxy
suggests that when a dictatorship seizes power that it does so
violently: people are shot, a military coup occurs, tanks are in the
streets. In our case the coup occurred without a shot being fired. It
was the election of 2000, decided by a conservative wing of the
Supreme Court. Since then, corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel,
and others have reaped millions and billions of dollars in contracts
and profits. Hartmann says that in 1938 Mussolini dissolved his
Parliament and replaced it with the "Camera dei Fasci e delle
Corporazoni" -- the Chamber of Fascist Corporations. This is where
we are today. The country is driven by corporations and corporate
lobbyists in league with an extreme rightwing arm of the Republican
Party. Our problem is that we, as Progressives, always optimistic and
hopeful, do not want to ADMIT to ourselves, that the game is over. We
have an American Fascist government, and if George Bush wins this
election the next four years will see the US descend into a spiral of
military, economic, and social upheaval not seen since the Civil War.
These are BAD times.

Ed LaFrance
Sebastopol, Calif.

Wake Up, Christians

I sincerely hope that Rev. Allen Brill's message ("Open Letter to
Christian Conservatives," 10/15/04 TPP) to the Christian
conservatives is seriously considered by them before they cast their
votes on Nov. 2.

I wish that there was some way that this group can hear the cry of
pain and sorrow of the grief stricken Christian Iraqi mothers who
have lost their children to Bush's 500-pound bombs in this war. Let
them explain to such mothers why they are supporting Bush the "child
killer" just because he claims to be a pro-life candidate.

Wake up, my Christian brothers, and see the Light!

M. Askarian
New York, N.Y.

Secure Nation

Ralph Nader's comments on the Bush administration's failure to
care for the people ["Don't Wait for Killer Flu," 10/1/04
TPP] reminded me of another instance which recently outraged
me.

When New Orleans was threatened with a direct hit by Hurricane
Ivan, we heard estimates that about 50,000 people without cars were
at risk of death, mostly by drowning in that city below sea level.
The only disaster preparation was the city's stocking 10,000 body
bags. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for
dealing with natural disasters as well as terrorist threats, and the
danger to New Orleans from hurricanes has been known for years.
Clearly if the government had been doing its job there would have
been an evacuation plan to get all those 50,000 people out of harm's
way.

Fifty thousand is more than 15 times the number killed on Sept.
11. If you were to talk of 15 9/11s, there would be universal
outrage, and demands for the resignation of incompetent and
indifferent officials. But the people left behind in New Orleans were
poor, so nobody in the Bush administration gave a damn, and so far as
I am aware nobody in Congress has called for an investigation of
Homeland Security's gross negligence.

We got lucky -- not only the people saved when the storm turned,
but all of us who would have borne the national shame of their having
been left to die. But we should not go on relying on luck. If the
pundits and elected officials are too indifferent to demand
investigations and changes, we must.

We shall have security only to the extent that we are willing to
create it through our own responsible actions.

Katharine W. Rylaarsdam
Baltimore, Md.

Vets Not Better Off

I am a combat disabled veteran of WWII (Silver Star and Purple
Heart) and wonder what day of the week we can believe President
Bush.

The president's budget office recently announced that it would cut
a billion dollars out of existing veteran's health care programs next
year if he is re-elected on Nov. 2.

This billion-dollar cut comes on top of the president's ongoing
attempt to close veterans' hospitals across the nation, his $50
million cut in medical research on new prosthetics and cutting
164,000 veterans from their prescription drug coverage.

On becoming president, George W. Bush promised to cut the backlog
of veterans waiting for service, but now he plans to cut 540 VA
staffers who review disability claims -- even as the list of
wounded veterans from Iraq is growing.

These programs are already shortchanged by the commander-in-chief
to the point that 350,000 sick and injured veterans have to
"stand-in-line" for six months or more because the VA system is so
backed up.

Rudyard Kipling well knew politicians years ago when he wrote his
poem "Tommy Atkins," how British soldiers were treated well during a
war and ignored afterwards.

James R. Bird
Lumberton, N.J.

Four More Years

When I hear brain washed audiences droning "Four More Years", I
cringe and ponder their reasoning.

Exactly what are these people asking for? Four more years of
what?

Four more years of sacrifice by the poor and middle class?

Four more years of body bags and thousands of new patients filling
up the VA hospitals?

Four more years of families being deprived of a mother or father
as they go off to war?

Four more years of the wealthy getting richer?

Four more years leading us to a fascist state?

Four more years of bringing devastation to innocents abroad?

Four more years of increasing the national debt?

Four more years of lies and distortions?

Four more years of unfulfilled promises made during campaigns?

Four more years of being hated by people in other countries?

Four more years of ignoring the plight of the Palestinians?

We've already had three plus years of disappointing, shameful
activities sponsored by the present administration, and when we hear
selected audiences yelling Four More Years on cue, we cannot fathom
the reasoning behind the chanting. And this is the party that proudly
embraced President Eisenhower, yet they ignore his admonishment about
war and the industrial complex.

Let's become peace keepers and when we vote in November let's make
sure that a new administration will take over and do their best to
make sure that the next four years will bring our country back into
fellowship with mankind everywhere.

Helen L. Crowe
Claremont, N.H.

Full of Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn simply refuses to get it, and I hope vast
numbers of progressives are growing just as weary of his hyperbolic
Kerry-bashing as I am in this critical election cycle.

To say there's "not a dime's worth of difference" [9/15/04
TPP] between Bush and Kerry on issue after issue can only cause
the objective and informed observer to question Mr. Cockburn's very
sense of reality. There are significant differences and even a blind
person could see them given the extreme directions this
administration has taken us. From approaches to Iraq, terrorism,
health care, tax policy, the economy, fiscal management, the
environment, labor issues, stem cell research, the role of religion
in public policy, media consolidation, education, a woman's right to
choose and a host of other issues, there are stark differences in
both the opposing records and plans. I respect Mr. Cockburn's right
to voice his views, but his analyses are lacking, and his sense of
electoral reality seems unhitched.

Progressives everywhere better darn well get this message and get
it quick: Either Bush and the rabid Republicans will be re-elected or
Kerry and the Democrats will unseat them. There will be no other
scenario. Right now only the Democrats have a chance to break the
right-wing's power stranglehold on all branches of this government.
This cycle is simply too high-stakes for out-of-reality "protest"
votes. For all of Mr. Cockburn's ultra-left ravings, ravings are all
they will ever be without power. No far-left revolution is going to
be taking place anytime soon.

Mr. Cockburn may feel some moral-rhetorical catharsis after all
this, but if progressives allow themselves to be swayed by any of it,
Bush-Cheney-Rove-Ashcroft-DeLay will only be thanking him gleefully
as they tap-dance all the way back to Washington.

Are Kerry and the Democrats a progressive's sweetest dream? Not
necessarily. But compared to the only other possibility in this
cycle, they are a progressive's tiptoe through the tulips.

Ron Bilancia
Brewer, Maine

Tax Dodgers

There's been much discussion lately about Bush and Cheney having
avoided service in Vietnam, and that both rejoiced with much liquid
refreshments. But that happened over 30 years ago, and many others
did the same.

What's really disconcerting is that both served companies that
avoided paying taxes by forming offshore subsidiaries. When Cheney
was head of Halliburton, 20 subsidiaries were formed in the Cayman
Islands, one of the leading tax havens. Bush's Harken Energy also
formed one in Cayman Islands but never made profit. It may have been
legal, but many do not consider it patriotic, honest or fair to other
taxpayers.